Mike’s methodology is the problem with this video.
Culture, not methodology, is the key factor in understanding the resurrection. The “3 questions/best answer” method Mike deploys in this video is ethnocentric & anachronistic. For one thing (among many) it disparages visionary seeing by calling it “pathological” or “hallucinagenic.” (Ironic since in antiquity such name-calling served to disparage persons – but this is another discussion).
In antiquity bodies could & did exist in different forms and visions were real experiences conveying real information & knowledge. The method behind Licona’s understanding of resurrection is flawed as it imposes our modern, Western “consensus reality” onto an event that happened in another worldview hosting a vastly different consensus reality. He basically claims a “supernatural” event when in anitquity, there was no difference between “natural” and “supernatural” which are post-Enlightenment categories. In other words, for his method to work, Mike assumes what is called a “myth of realism,” that is, that our modern Euro-American experience is the same as anyone living in Jesus’ time and place.
I’m a Christian & I know Jesus was raised. How the raised Jesus was experienced by those he appeared to was not the same way we experience bodies in our world.
I realize that this comment is a year old, but for those just now finding this post…
I wonder if John believes that Jesus was raised bodily, so that while, according to his view, the experiences of Jesus’ followers were somehow different, the resurrection should be understood as a literal, physical event. This would seem to undercut his argument.
Secondly, John seems to believe that truth differs across time and space, such that there is “Western, post-Enlightenment, Euro-American” truth and “Eastern, pre-Enlightenment” truth. I believe that this can be shown to be a self-defeating position.
Mike’s methodology is the problem with this video.
Culture, not methodology, is the key factor in understanding the resurrection. The “3 questions/best answer” method Mike deploys in this video is ethnocentric & anachronistic. For one thing (among many) it disparages visionary seeing by calling it “pathological” or “hallucinagenic.” (Ironic since in antiquity such name-calling served to disparage persons – but this is another discussion).
In antiquity bodies could & did exist in different forms and visions were real experiences conveying real information & knowledge. The method behind Licona’s understanding of resurrection is flawed as it imposes our modern, Western “consensus reality” onto an event that happened in another worldview hosting a vastly different consensus reality. He basically claims a “supernatural” event when in anitquity, there was no difference between “natural” and “supernatural” which are post-Enlightenment categories. In other words, for his method to work, Mike assumes what is called a “myth of realism,” that is, that our modern Euro-American experience is the same as anyone living in Jesus’ time and place.
I’m a Christian & I know Jesus was raised. How the raised Jesus was experienced by those he appeared to was not the same way we experience bodies in our world.
I realize that this comment is a year old, but for those just now finding this post…
I wonder if John believes that Jesus was raised bodily, so that while, according to his view, the experiences of Jesus’ followers were somehow different, the resurrection should be understood as a literal, physical event. This would seem to undercut his argument.
Secondly, John seems to believe that truth differs across time and space, such that there is “Western, post-Enlightenment, Euro-American” truth and “Eastern, pre-Enlightenment” truth. I believe that this can be shown to be a self-defeating position.